City Ordinance to be reviewed

The City of Fort Worth is preparing to re-open the debate about its gas drilling ordinance, possibly in January. Matt Hudson, who is President of the Fort Worth League of Neighborhoods, writes:

“Well, as you all know, we have been actively working with the city Council and Mayor to reopen the gas drilling task force and we finally got a commitment this week to do so!

While this is great news, we also asked the city for 2 other things:

1. Conduct and independent study of the environmental impacts of urban drilling on our neighborhoods including water, earth, noise, light, etc.
2. Declare a moratorium on new drilling permits while the study and task force work.

As you can imagine, the second point did not go over too well. But we will still keep trying. We believe it is time to call a timeout or halftime if you will and dig deep into the impact that gas drilling has had on our city and plan for the future.

To aid in this matter, we have created a new section of our website that lists resources you can use for your NA meetings. As always, all of the League material is open to all members. Which means, feel free to download any of it and use it in your communications or meetings.

We do have one request though. During our last Gas Drilling Education event, we asked those present to send us their concerns about drilling. In other words, we are trying to compile a list of issues we as neighborhoods want the task force to address when they reconvene after the Holidays.

Please email us (president@fwlna.org) your list and we will compile the results.

Also, we will be sending out a survey asking for your support on the two points outlined above. the more people who respond, the better voice we will have with the city.

The FWLNA believes that there are unanswered questions regarding urban gas drilling and we want the city to make sure we get the answers before it is too late.”

I am not so sure I would agree with Hudson’s suggestions to the city, but this is obviously of interest.

You might also be interested in the Startlegram’s Barnett Shale blog: http://startelegram.typepad.com/barnett_shale/